


The Lion of Judah

by Leviafan



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 03:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/961277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leviafan/pseuds/Leviafan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The whole world is a very narrow bridge, but the important thing is not to fear at all." (Modern AU character piece for Javert; a fair chunk of it is about his parents.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lion of Judah

**Author's Note:**

> IDEK what this is, but it started writing itself, so I just let it. Based on my headcanon of modern!Javert as a modern orthodox Jew, which spiraled into his mother being from Algeria and coming to France after the civil war there, and both his parents being arrested during the protests of '68. I'm not entirely sure it fits together as well as my brain seems to think, though.
> 
> Also, I don't usually write in present tense. Hopefully it doesn't show too badly.

Military in the streets. Deadly flowers blooming everywhere. Chaos, bloody chaos, and for what? Marie doesn't know... doesn't care. She's getting out. Got her passport, her ticket, her belongings packed in one big suitcase so heavy she can barely lift it. Heavy luggage—light heart. Her one regret? She is alone. Her father, all she has left, he refuses to leave. "Why bother?" he asks whenever she brings it up, his voice old and tired like she's never heard it before. "I know where I stand here." Every time, he lays his hand over hers and she finds herself staring at the wrinkled, age-mottled skin with the horrible finality of understanding. Lips pursed, she knows she must open them soon, to say goodbye.

And she does, because Marie has feelings, not sentimentality. Across the sea her new life waits. No one stands by her side on the boat, but she knows it is only a matter of time. She's never had any trouble attracting a mate. No, keeping one has always been her Achilles' heel. They come, but they never stay. Hummingbirds at a flower. Someday her font of nectar will dry up, but until then she will enjoy life as best she knew how.

Five years pass. With cleverness and hard work, she secures a place at the Sorbonne. There she meets a firebrand, a fellow student, a poet, a Marxist—another hummingbird, she thinks. But this one, Rémy, continues to hover nearby, for months, then a year. On the anniversary of their meeting, he proposes. She accepts, out of surprise, but also delight. Marie is devoted utterly to her husband, tied to him heart and soul. When the time comes for revolution, she cannot be anywhere but at his side. The only thing that can separate them is the implacable bars of prison cells, which is where they find themselves in May of '68.

There she has time to think. To reconsider. Has she traded one conflict for another, willingly? But it is too late. She already carries Rémy's child in her womb, has for months. She waits, she hopes, but every new day that passes seems to take a turn for the worse, and the world outside the prison withdraws further from her sight. There are negotiations, but they come too late for Marie. Her child is born there, before his time, and taken from her. After all, prison is no place for infants. She weeps, but accepts their fate.

Eventually the chaos passes and both she and Rémy are freed. The experience has sliced through their heartstrings, the ties that bind them together. For several years, longer than they should have, they remain with each other, but apart. He delves deeper into the world of revolt, which makes no money; she tries to keep body and soul together by means less and less honest. Meanwhile their child grows from a pup to a cub to a young wolf, and it is then he has the confidence to break away, to cut himself off from his parents' misdeeds. He will not be like them. Not in manner, not in profession—in no way will he resemble these two beings who have spawned him and shown him what must not be. They are large imprints on his life, in the negative sense only. He will guard society from their kind, he will not attack it as they have.

And yet he cannot escape his species. He comes from the same stock. And in one solitary way he does not deny it. Through his mother's lineage he is a Jew; according to tradition this is true whether or not he acknowledges it, but he does. Like a life preserver he clings to it, has pulled himself from the gutter with it. He is a ba'al teshuva, a returner, that is what it is called—but in truth he had no exposure to either religion or culture before the day he first stood inside the sanctuary and watched as the ark was opened. From that moment his life is changed. Before, he still saw two roads, but when he became chosen, he also chose.

Having chosen, he devotes his life to this path. The lion of Judah, guarding the gates. He attends school and receives good marks, though he hates it. From there he joins the police, his backward idea of youthful rebellion. He impresses colleagues and superiors with his work ethic and tactical mind, his unwavering honesty, and by forty he is made commissaire in the Latin Quarter. Few of his colleagues try to get close to him, fewer still succeed, but he does have a select number of friends. He lives simply, with little time and no inclination towards a social life, but he is content enough. He is austere, marble, complete.

He is Javert.


End file.
